Anatoly Tsyganok
Oriental Review

"NATO officials understand that without a land operation it is practically impossible to defeat Gaddafi."

The conference held on March 29 in London made it clear that the initiators of the Libyan war are going to continue it. At the same time, the experience of the previous wars in the Mediterranean Sea and in the Persian Gulf shows that air operation is only the first act of the campaign.

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From the very beginning the Western coalition (namely the forces of the US, France and Britain) chose strange targets for the attacks. It would have been a different matter if they had destroyed only the headquarters of Muammar Gaddafi in Tripoli but the air attacks also hit a hospital for elderly people. On the next day when the Libyan mass media reported that 48 peaceful citizens had been killed and 150 wounded several countries slammed the coalition’s attacks.

In the Arab world the public opinion is more and more taking sides with Tripoli. The position of the Arab League has also changed. Three days after the first air attacks Moscow and Beijing demanded stop to the military operation in Libya. In its statement Beijing warned the coalition that the attacks may lead to “humanitarian catastrophe”. On March 20, the African Union joined China condemning the military actions of the coalition. The African Union's Committee on Libya issued a statement in which it called for an "immediate stop" to the air attacks. Earlier Venezuela and Cuba voiced the same demands.

Now the following countries are taking active part in the campaign against Libya: the US, Great Britain, France, Canada, Denmark, Spain, Norway, UAE, Qatar. As for Germany, Greece and Italy they are only providing their air bases to the coalition forces.

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Stephen Lendman

Despite a disaster multiples worse than Chernobyl, major media reports all along downplayed it. Now they largely ignore it, moving on to more important things like celebrity features and baseball's opening day, besides pretending American-led Libya bombing is well-intended when, in fact, it's another brazen power grab - an imperial war of conquest, explained in numerous previous articles.

The horror of all wars aside, waged solely for wealth and power, never humanity, Japan deserves regular top billing, given its global implications and potential millions of lives affected. Ignoring it is scandalous, yet it's practically disappeared from television where most people get news, unaware only managed reports are aired omitting vital truths.

Over three weeks and counting, Japan's crisis keeps worsens. Radiation levels in Fukushima's underground tunnel water reached 10,000 times above normal and rising. In nearby seawater, they're 4,385 times too high. Heavy rainfall exacerbates the problem. Food, water, air and soil contamination is spreading.

On March 31, New York Times writer Henry Fountain headlined, "Cleanup Questions as Radiation Spreads," saying [that], at issue is "how to clean up areas that have been heavily contaminated by radioactivity," stopping short of suggesting they're dead zones that may affect all northern Japan, an area comparable to Pennsylvania, potentially making it uninhabitable.

On March 31, the IAEA (the industry's global promoter) "said a soil sample from Iitate, a village of 7,000 about 25 miles northwest of the plant, showed very high concentrations of cesium-137," a harmful gamma ray-producing isotope, contaminating air, water and soil for decades.

Levels found are "double" those in Chernobyl's dead zone, raising concerns about extending Japan's evacuation, not done so far. Moreover, they're rising daily and will continue for months, perhaps years, creating permanent contamination combined with uranium, plutonium, and other hazardous toxins.

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Najmuddin A. Shaikh
Strategic Culture Foundation

Pakistan's former intelligence chief Hamid Gul (Der Spiegel)

Pakistanis had entertained high hopes that when President Obama assumed office his policy towards South Asia would reflect what he had said in his campaign speeches and what his past experience of living in Pakistan, where his mother had worked for many years, had made clear to him: The situation in the region often called a “nuclear flashpoint” could improve only if a just and equitable solution was found for the issues-primarily the dispute over Kashmir-that bedevilled relations between India and Pakistan. Most importantly from the perspective of the immediate American priority in the region- the stabilising of Afghanistan and disrupting, dismantling and defeating the Al-Qaeda network and its allies-required that Pakistan should be free of other preoccupations and be able to focus on assisting the NATO effort in Afghanistan while at the same time taking the political and military action needed to quell the growth of extremism in Pakistan. This could only happen when Pakistan could rest easy with regard to the threat it perceived on its eastern border from its giant neighbour India.

It was therefore visualised that Obama would, as promised, appoint a special representative armed with plenipotentiary powers to mediate or at least facilitate an Indo-Pak dialogue and put America’s weight behind proposals that would resolve the Kashmir dispute. While this would, it was known, take some time there could be a development of trust and confidence between the two neighbours if Indo-Pak agreements were reached on the basis of existing understandings on such minor disputes as the Siachen Glacier and the Sir Creek and if greater cooperation could be established on the issue of terror that was a problem of common concern for Pakistan and India and indeed for the international community.

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